


Knights' Code

by cat_77



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Knights' Code includes keeping your word, something Leon is very good at indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knights' Code

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meatball42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/gifts).



> Written for meatball42 for the Merlin_Holidays exchange. One of the prompts offered was a Gwaine/Leon coming together fic, and I rather liked the idea of that. Hopefully this does it justice.
> 
> * * *

"Ouch."

Leon blinked. A simple exclamation seemed like a vast understatement for the situation they were currently in. A grand battle, full of clashing swords, casting sorcerers, and a certain royal servant being where he most definitely should not was finally winding down and the losses just beginning to be tabulated.

"Yeah, that one is going to cost me," the same voice sighed in mock dramatics. Leon was fairly certain of the owner of said voice, having had fought beside him for many a time, the current situation only the most recent of which.

"Gwaine?" he asked, just to verify. His fellow knight had been nearby only a moment ago, but now seemed to have disappeared into the very shadows. Given the aforementioned sorcerers at play, Leon tried his best not to assume the worst.

"The one and only," Gwaine replied. A movement, perhaps a wave of one hand, identified him amongst the rubble and fallen. Now that he was certain who it was, he was quite certain all was not well. He knew that voice in many a situation, from a bawdy tavern brawl to a quiet and peaceful watch on the Eastern parapet. This was neither. This voice was exhausted, but hiding it, tinged with pain, but denying it likely even to himself.

He trudged through the wreckage to the side of the man he reluctantly learned to call friend, and did not like what he saw. "What happened?" he demanded as he attempted to manoeuvre closer.

"He cost me my boot is what happened," Gwaine replied, flippant as always. "What kind of man does that? Nips at your ankles like a stray dog?"

Leon did not need to ask who as it was most definitely the man currently run through by Gwaine's sword, whose own blade lay in a pile of muck beside Gwaine's clearly damaged boot. The other thing that was clear was that it was not solely the boot that was damaged. Gwaine currently laid propped across what appeared to be another body, and the bottom half of the boot in question was stained dark from the area of the slice downward. Leon was willing to bet more than a single coin that the "muck" he noticed before was made up in good part by Gwaine's own blood at this point.

"How deep is the cut?" he asked, trying his damnedest to see in the fading light.

"Deep enough to know I'll never wear these again," Gwaine complained, purposefully obtuse. "And I had just got them comfortable, you know? Nice and broken in. Such a waste." He yanked his blade free and wiped the gore on the body he had freed it from.

Leon sighed and reached for the patience he usually only needed with Arthur and Merlin at their worst, or roughly every other Wednesday. "Why don't we see if we can't patch you up and steal you a pair to wear on the ride home? This man looks to be about your size." He gestured to the very man whom Gwaine had so recently taken down, and found them surprisingly evenly matched.

"I doubt it," Gwaine said with a lewd smile. "I may be proportional in many ways, but feet would be one of the two I am most definitely not." He even waggled his eyebrows just in case Leon did not get the hidden meaning.

Leon got the meaning. He fought a blush through long years of experience and simply shook his head. "Let's get that leg of yours wrapped and see what else if lurking about here aside from fallen enemies pretending to be stray dogs, shall we?"

Gwaine pouted, either from Leon not rising to the bait or from the damage to his attire, and Leon set to work. He was pleased to see the damage was far less than he had originally feared, and even more pleased to see Elyan and Percival appear to help with the remaining stragglers.

Dawn found them on the road back to Camelot, and dusk found them safely inside her walls. It was well past the evening meal when Gaius announced Gwaine should heal up nicely so long as he actually obeyed certain basic recuperatory rules, and only shortly thereafter that the physician was called away to deal with a minor emergency in the Lower Town. Merlin was to see to the king who had a minor injury of his own, and Elyan and Percival had disappeared with a coin purse each, likely to the tavern to begin their post-battle ritual hangover.

Leon was sorely tempted to join them, but also found he could not just leave Gwaine behind. Not that taking the injured knight through the near empty streets to join their friends at the tavern was an option, despite said knight's best attempts to weasel such a task out of him. Gaius had given orders and Gwaine was going to listen to them for a change, even if it took Leon himself playing nursemaid to do so.

He knocked on the door to the other knight's chambers, and entered when called. The rooms were far neater than expected, but the chambermaid currently leaving was likely the source for that. Given that the maid was as old as Leon's own mother, and that Gwaine was still fully dressed where he lay propped against a mountain of cushions upon his bed, Leon was pleased to see at least one order had been followed.

"What brings you my way on this fine evening, Sir Leon?" Gwaine asked as he shifted against the pillows.

Leon hefted the overflowing tray he carried and replied, "I thought you could do with a meal, and perhaps a bit of company?"

"Company is always welcomed," Gwaine said with only a hint of his usual leer. That alone told Leon the true state of his recovery. "Food is welcomed as well, though would be even more welcomed with a flagon or two of ale?" he wheedled and searched the tray hopefully.

Leon shook his head. "No ale tonight, physician's orders." He set the tray on a small table beside the bed and tried his best to ignore the injured man's childish pout. "Behave and eat your meat and pudding and perhaps we can discuss a mug of mulled wine though," he relented.

"A large mug?" Gwaine asked with pleading eyes.

Leon knew better than to fall for that tactic, last seen on both his own brothers and the miller's son, but it was a near thing. "A mug," was all he said instead.

Not that it truly mattered as Gwaine began to drift during the meal itself, whatever potions Gaius had given him doing their duty. Leon reset the tray with the remaining dishes and tucked the blankets neatly around his friend. "Sleep well," he whispered as he took his leave.

Gwaine muttered something in reply, eyes never opening, but it was too quiet for Leon to hear. That was likely for the best though, as there was little chance it was appropriate and it was far too rambling to be a simple comment of thanks.

The next day, after a patrol around the castle to ensure all was well, Leon was presented with a message from one of the passing servants. He unrolled the parchment and let out a little chuckle, surprising the waiting boy. Upon it was a simple note, scrawled in smudged ink and barely legible. It said simply, "I believe you promised me wine?"

He arrived that evening with another platter of food and the requisite wine, though only enough for them to appreciate a single mug each. They laughed and ate and told stories late into the night, some of them even good enough for polite company. And, after Leon had tucked Gwaine neatly beneath his covers for the night, he discovered the oddest of sensations. It was not the wide smile that he had trouble wiping from his face, but that he actually looked forward to repeating the day's events on the morrow.

And so he did. He showed up the next day, and the day after that as well. Any reason beyond simple want was flimsy at best. Gaius had returned and checked the wound each day, and Gwaine himself was obviously healing. His strength returned with his customary impatience, and the various maids and squires told tales of his attempts to escape the prison of his rooms and wander the castle, but he always waited, always settled for the evening when Leon arrived.

He tried not to read too much into it, tried not to flatter himself too much on his abilities to calm the wild beast as it was, but the evidence was there and he rather liked the conclusion he reached, though he feared to voice it even to himself.

It all came to a head when Leon's patrol was unexpectedly extended. There was a minor squirmish with some bandits to the North that had left him tired and sore and more than a little tardy to the evening meal. He almost did not stop to see Gwaine at all, the need for sleep a tangible thing that called to him like the Sirens of legend. He had promised though, after helping his friend take a short walk the length of the hallway earlier that day, that he would visit when he returned and speak to him of all that he had missed.

He carried a lighter meal this time, uncertain as to whether or not Gwaine had already eaten during his absence, and a full flagon of wine as, by the king himself, he needed it after seeing some of the things he had seen that day. 

He expected to find Gwaine lounging in bed, or perhaps in that favourite chair of his, one of the various historical scrolls he claimed never to read in hand. Instead, he found him seated at the bench to the table, trying his damnedest to pull a new boot on over the wrapping to his wound, vambraces a knotted mess, unsheathed sword at his side.

"Leon!" he exclaimed, head shooting up painfully quickly. He stumbled to his feet and limped heavily towards the door, boot and weaponry forgotten. "They said there was a battle. They said you were injured. They-"

"I'm fine," he insisted, and he truly was. He set his gifts down upon the table and let Gwaine see for himself. There was a scratch down his side hidden by his tunic, and his armour needed to be hammered back into place - a task currently being undertaken by his squire - but he was relatively unscathed, and had come out of this battle far better than his friend had the one before.

Gwaine stepped closer, the pad of his thumb brushing over a scratch just above Leon's brow. "I was worried," he admitted. "They-"

"You mustn't always listen to stable hands and squires," Leon chided, though he would be lying to say the concern did not warm his heart.

"But that's where I get the best of the gossip," Gwaine scoffed. He smiled, warm and true. He had made no move to step back yet, but neither had Leon, so that was fair.

"Did you not trust your fellow knights to do their duty?" he teased.

The hand moved, thumb smoothed across his cheek, palm cupping his jaw. "I trust few with that which I hold dear," he said. Leon would have expected him to blush at the admission, but he held his gaze steady, dared him to object, dared him to do far more.

Perhaps it was the exhaustion. Perhaps it was seeing Gwaine whole and true and utterly his shameless self once again. Perhaps Gwaine's brashness fuelled some of his own. He cocked his head to the side and bent downwards just the tiniest of bits, giving plenty of room for refusal, plenty of room for misunderstanding and mistake.

Gwaine wanted no such thing. He surged upwards and caught his lips in a kiss, brief and biting and far from chaste. He took a hobbled small step backward when they parted, eyeing Leon speculatively, but Leon allowed no such thing. 

He tugged him closer by his tunic, which may well have been a sleep shirt tucked into his trousers. He kissed him again, and again, and once more because he could. Gwaine smiled against his lips and gave as good as he got, wrapped an arm around him and held on.

When Gwaine teetered backward and caught himself on his injured leg, and Leon leaned forward to catch him and pulled at the scrapes and bruises along his side, he knew they needed to separate. "Okay?" he asked, voice not much more than a breath of sound.

"Quite," Gwaine replied, breathing far too quickly and eyes lined with the edge of pain.

Leon gestured to the waiting bench, and to the food that lined the table. "Dinner?" he suggested.

Gwaine eyed the light meal, the flagon of wine, and made a show of looking to the rumpled bedding behind him. There was no way his intentions were pure as he replied, "We could start with that."

Leon smiled, rather liking the brashness, rather liking the lack of need to hide behind courtly manners in this of all things. He led Gwaine to the table, hand a bit too low to be solely guiding. "Yes," he agreed. "I suppose we could."

Gwaine's answering grin was full of promise and, as one who lived and would likely die by the Knights' Code, Leon quite looked forward to him keeping his word.


End file.
